Why when wearing a mask, or anything meant to filter things, still allow smells to penetrate easily. How do smells still attach to things that allow it to penetrate when other things (such as viruses) really dont?

Question

Why when wearing a mask, or anything meant to filter things, still allow smells to penetrate easily. How do smells still attach to things that allow it to penetrate when other things (such as viruses) really dont?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Smells are simple small molecules and compared to them viruses are huge

The smell of banana is in large part [Isoamyl_acetate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoamyl_acetate) ist is 6 carbon atom and 1 oxygen in 2 hydrogens in the end. Let’s overestimate to 9 carbon atoms in a straight line. The covalent radii of carbon are 70 picometers so twice that for each atom so 70*2*9=1290 pm = 1.29 nanometer in length and this is an overestimation. The width is a lot less.

A coronavirus is 125 nm in diameter or 100x larger

You can compare it to sand that can be 2mm in diameter. 100x that is a 20 cm.

So you can compare it to sand versus rock the size of a human head and why one can pass through a metal grate made that stop the other.